School of Religion Graduate ProjectsMaster's Essayhttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/61662016-12-10T01:08:13Z2016-12-10T01:08:13ZWalking with God through Nature: An Examination of John Flavel’s Behavioural Instructions on Matters Related to Christian PietyVan Straten, Paulhttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/146732016-11-16T05:47:18Z2016-07-26T00:00:00ZWalking with God through Nature: An Examination of John Flavel’s Behavioural Instructions on Matters Related to Christian Piety
Van Straten, Paul
John Flavel was a Reformed Puritan of the seventeenth-century who wrote a series of devotional guides that offered instructions drawn from Christian mystical traditions on how to improve religious activities as a means of ecstatically encountering God. Evaluating the efficacy of these instructions from a scientifically-based behavioural perspective, this study has found that Flavel’s techniques were likely helpful to his readers in facilitating socially normative ecstatic experiences through ordinary Christian practice. Furthermore, discovering that Flavel promoted the use of these techniques for engaging with ecological materials in the wilderness and country-side, this essay proposes that Flavel introduced his readers to effectual manners that could help them ecstatically encounter God during the practice of meditational nature-based walks.
2016-07-26T00:00:00ZDisciplining Madness, Disciplining YogaEaton, Markhttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/82942016-11-16T08:46:49Z2013-09-19T00:00:00ZDisciplining Madness, Disciplining Yoga
Eaton, Mark
This paper will examine contemporary North American yoga, specifically the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Toronto, using theoretical frameworks taken from the work of Michel Foucault. Drawing on his work in Discipline and Punish, it will look at yoga as a modern “carceral” institution. Using Foucault’s analysis in Madness and Civilizaition, this paper will explore how yoga intersects, is some ways, with madness. The underlying argument is that yoga and madness, as discourses, are both based upon institutional disciplining of pre-discursive experiences. This paper contends that the pre-discursive “sources” of experience should not be seen as unified points of origin, but as an underlying “difference”, or capacity to be otherwise. This “difference” points to multiple, undifferentiated, mutual sources of yoga and madness.
2013-09-19T00:00:00ZRELIGION AND NATURE IN AKAN CULTURE: A CASE STUDY OF OKYEMAN ENVIRONMENT FOUNDATIONEshun, Edwin Kwamehttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/68322016-11-17T14:15:59Z2011-10-10T00:00:00ZRELIGION AND NATURE IN AKAN CULTURE: A CASE STUDY OF OKYEMAN ENVIRONMENT FOUNDATION
Eshun, Edwin Kwame
Akan relationship with nature as expressed by Jefferson and Skinner (1974) enjoins the living to view nature as sacred and in effect prevent it from wanton destruction. This is because humans have a relationship with nature and must in return treasure it. This relationship shaped people‟s perception and attitude towards nature through the adherence to taboos associated with nature as well as the recognition of the place of non-human members of the community. This was meant to consolidate the sacred relationship between humans and nature. However, with Ghana‟s adoption of „Western‟ perspectives of development which perceives humanity as superior and in charge of creation as well as its perception of Akan animistic tendencies as „primitive,‟ „superstitious‟ and „fetish‟ has led to the destruction of nature. Ghana‟s environment continually faces gradual degradation because of the neglect of the role of the Akan indigenous religion in the preservation of nature because of the perception that the adoption of the animistic tenets of Akan Indigenous religion in Ghana‟s environmental policy constitutes a retrogression. The continuous neglect of religion and the over-reliance on legislation as a means of preventing environmental degradation will worsen the environment situation. It is therefore appropriate that contemporary conservation methods take cognizance of Indigenous religion.
2011-10-10T00:00:00Z